book review shorts

I read a lot of books that I never get around to reviewing. So I decided I should get around to reviewing them--but just in short snippets.

Vinyl Princess--Yvonne Prinz--December 2009--HarperTeen--320 pages--3 apples
blurb: Allie, a sixteen-year-old who is obsessed with LPs, works at the used record store on Telegraph Ave. and deals with crushes--her own and her mother's--her increasingly popular blog and zine, and generally grows up over the course of one summer in her hometown of Berkeley, California.
me: I enjoyed the humor in this book. I liked Allie's relationship with her mom and her best friend. I liked the romances Allie has over the summer. The obvious one, and the not so obvious one. I liked her blog and zine and her passion for music and vinyl. Overall, a fun book.

Fever Crumb--Philip Reeve--April 2010--Scholastic Press--324 pages--4 apples
blurb: Foundling Fever Crumb has been raised as an engineer although females in the future London, England, are not believed capable of rational thought, but at age fourteen she leaves her sheltered world and begins to learn startling truths about her past while facing danger in the present.
me: My favorite aspect of this world Reeve created was that it was the future after some great plague and the people are using old technology that they don't understand anymore. But that technology is beyond what we have now. I also loved the slang that had evolved (googling meant looking for someone in a crowd) and the way they used obsolete objects (tiling the floor with old computer board keys). Fascinating.

The Strange Case of Origami Yoda--Tom Angleberger--April 2010--Amulet Books--144 pages--3 apples
blurb: Sixth-grader Tommy and his friends describe their interactions with a paper finger puppet of Yoda, worn by their weird classmate Dwight, as they try to figure out whether or not the puppet can really predict the future.
me: Humorous and quirky middle-grade book. Dwight is rather odd, and though he remains odd through the whole book, his oddness is accepted.


The Gospel According to Larry--Janet Tashjian--2001--Puffin Books--240 pages--4 apples
blurb: After creating a controversial and hugely popular website, teenager Josh Swensen becomes trapped inside his brilliant creation and must find a way to remain anonymous.
me: An oldie, but a goodie. I listened to this book because Josh Swenson is my good friend's hero. She does not believe in collecting possessions and hopes to be like Josh someday. The story was interesting and rather crazy, but also so believable. If I didn't know going in that it was purely fiction, I could have believed that it was true.

*links to goodreads.com